The dissemination of misinformation, propaganda, and conspiracy theories on social media represents a substantial threat to democratic values on a global scale. The malevolent use of social media undermines public trust in both mainstream media and democratic institutions. Despite the development of several interdisciplinary solutions to measure and manage the spread of misleading information, the threat remains persistent and is expected to worsen. Previous research highlights that, to date, limited focus has been placed on understanding individuals' behaviours when consuming and sharing misinformation. In this interdisciplinary project, we aim to leverage insights from emerging paradigms in cognitive science, social psychology, collective behaviour, and computational social science. Our goal is to better understand the sociological, cultural, and psychological factors that shape individuals’ decisions when consuming and sharing misinformation.

The project aims to explore individuals’ online behaviour across three key dimensions:

• Understand the behaviour of individuals when interacting with online content with or without time pressure.

• Understand the influence of conversational affordances on the quality of deliberation. 

• Investigate the correlation between people's preferences for social media sites, their choice of mainstream media and their socioeconomic background and political beliefs.